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One of the fired U.S. attorneys explains why he decided to speak out. (1:24)
 

Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias discusses the Justice Department firings. Full Interview. (23:08)
 

Tavis: David Iglesias was appointed by President Bush as the U.S. Attorney for New Mexico back in 2001. Until he and several others were asked to resign under highly unusual circumstances late last year. He was the first Hispanic U.S. attorney in New Mexico since the Nixon administration. Last week, he was in Washington meeting with members of the House Ethics Committee, who've been looking into the attorney firings.

Also last week, the White House announced that Karl Rove invoked executive privilege and did not testify under oath about this case. David Iglesias, nice to have you on the program.

David Iglesias: Thank you, good to be here, Tavis.

Tavis: It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm glad we have the full show here, which we rarely do around here. But there's so much to talk to you about I'm not even really sure where I want to begin. So why don't I start by asking how you have navigated your name and your face and your reputation - being talked about on C-SPAN, on every TV network, in "Time," "Newsweek." Everybody's talking about David Iglesias.

Iglesias: Well, I think that's the key, and not just for me but for most of my colleagues. When they went after our reputations by saying we were not doing a good job, by saying it was performance-related, that's where I drew the line. And I said, you know what, they can fire me but they can't slander my good name. In a small state like New Mexico, your reputation is everything. So at that point, early February is when I said I'm going to speak up, because what happened to me, what happened to my colleagues was wrong, and it should not happen again.

Tavis: What's the difference in your mind between being fired for something that is performance-related as opposed to being asked to leave because you serve at the pleasure of the president?

Iglesias: Right. Well, let me give you some examples of some U.S. attorneys recently that were fired for performance, or even misconduct. There was a U.S. attorney in Florida who bit the leg of a stripper. He was forced out. There was another U.S. attorney who grabbed the necktie of a journalist who asked him a hard question after a loss at trial. He was fired. Those are good examples of misconduct, and me and my colleagues had nothing remotely similar to that. We were pushed out for illicit political reasons.

Tavis: How do you respond to those persons who say, then, that that's not altogether the case; that - and the White House has spun this everywhere - that you serve, as I said a moment ago, at the pleasure of the president, and when he decides he wants to change people he has a right to do that without being attacked by you on my television program.

Iglesias: That's generally true, but this president and people like Arlen Specter, the senator from Pennsylvania, and Attorney General Gonzalez have said publicly there are a few grounds where you cannot legitimately fire a United States attorney, such as to interfere with an ongoing investigation. And I believe the evidence, once it's fully out, will show that we were forced out for illicit political reasons.

Tavis: How does the vice president then go on Larry King just days ago and say that this whole thing is a witch hunt?

Iglesias: Well, Mr. Cheney's completely wrong. He's not an attorney, he's never been a United States attorney, and he's trying to spin it so it looks as though we're a bunch of crybabies when in fact that's not the case.

Tavis: When you say - and you've said it a few times now - that you have very good reason to believe that you were fired for political reasons, what do you mean by that?

Iglesias: Okay, we are political creatures. I ran for office as a Republican attorney general candidate in 1998. But once we are in office, similar to federal judges, we are expected to stay out of politics. In fact, John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, told me in his office six years ago, "David, you are not to engage in political activities once you're in office." And I took that very seriously, as did my colleagues.

What happens is when you do get engaged in political activities if you're a U.S. attorney, that is grounds for termination, and there've been a few examples of that in this administration and in prior administrations.

Tavis: So draw the line for me, then, between that advice coming from former Attorney General Ashcroft to not get involved in politics with your believing that you were fired for political reasons. What's the connection?

Iglesias: Sure. Because when I took the two phone calls, one from Congresswoman Heather Wilson, the other from Senator Pete Domenici - both -

Tavis: Both Republicans.

Iglesias: Both Republicans, both from New Mexico, I took their message to be file indictments against a prominent Democrat before the election cycle. And I take that from the questions they ask me. They were asking me questions of private, confidential, non-public information regarding an investigation we were then doing about alleged corruption.

So I didn't play ball with them, I didn't file the indictments because they weren't ready, and surprisingly my name was put on a list to be terminated within weeks of Senator Pete Domenici's phone call.

Tavis: So your point here is then that because you didn't respond to the way this particular congresswoman, Ms. Wilson, and Senator Domenici wanted you to respond on these filings against a prominent Democrat, you were then placed on a list to be removed.

Iglesias: Exactly. Let's do the math. I was on no list to be terminated until after the phone calls. And I gave them information that they could not use in a political sense, such as I can tell you, “Senator,” that, “I'm going to file an indictment on this date against this person.” I can't tell a member of Congress that. That's privileged information. And the fact that I didn't give him what he wanted led, in my belief, to me being placed on the list within weeks of that illicit phone call.

Tavis: Your belief, then, is that if you had done what as opposed to what you did do, that you might not have been placed on that list.

Iglesias: Had I rushed the investigation, rushed an indictment, filed this political corruption indictment against a prominent Democrat before the election, because you have to go back to what he was asking me: are these indictments going to get filed before the election? Or I'm sorry, he said before November. What happens in November?

Tavis: Which means election time.

Iglesias: The general election, exactly.

Tavis: Not because I'm naive but because I want to give you a chance to respond, why was it so important for the senator and the congresswoman to pressure you to file these indictments before the election?

Iglesias: Because at the time, Congresswoman Wilson was in a dead heat with her opponent, who was the then state attorney general who had not filed any political corruption cases in her eight years as state attorney general in New Mexico. So this would have been yet another example for Congresswoman Wilson to use, showing that her opponent was soft on corruption.

So had I filed it, she would have said, “Well, look what the U.S. government has filed - yet another corruption case.” We just settled or got a good result in a corruption case that was unrelated. I was going to be filing another, bigger indictment, and that could have been used politically by the incumbent, Congresswoman Wilson.

Tavis: Let me go to the clip I want to play here; let me set it up first, though. We've just talked - which is actually a good setup - we've just talked about what happened with those phone calls from Senator Domenici and Congresswoman Wilson. So when you were testifying before the Senate, Senator Chuck Schumer out of New York had an exchange with Mr. Iglesias where he asked him some questions about his conversations about the phone call from Senator Domenici. Let's roll the tape here.

[Clip]

Tavis: I can only imagine - and of course, senators go at this every day and they have this really collegial way of slamming each other in the United States Senate. But I was kind of struck watching that because here you have Schumer basically going after his colleague, Domenici, in a hearing with you, and you're sitting there talking to one senator, essentially putting another senator on the hot seat. How'd you process being in that moment?

Iglesias: (Laughs) Well, it was one of the strangest experiences of my life.

Tavis: I can only imagine, yeah.

Iglesias: And especially because I've got a Democrat basically defending me and what I did.

Tavis: And you're a Republican.

Iglesias: I'm a Republican. Yeah, I'm not going to change my party affiliation because of this scandal. And I'm putting on report, so to speak, the senator who sponsored me to get my appointment from President Bush. So it was a very strange experience.

Tavis: Yeah, we should point that out. So Domenici is the guy who recommended you to the White House.

Iglesias: That's right, exactly.

Tavis: To be attorney general. Do you believe that because he did that that he felt you owed him when he made that phone call to you?

Iglesias: Oh, sure. And the fact that he's the second most senior U.S. senator serving right now - he's been there 35 years. He's taken people in; he's recommended lots of U.S. attorneys and federal judges and whatnot. I thought he just figured I would just go along with him and give him the information that he could have used for political advantage.

Tavis: On a personal level, if I might ask - I can certainly ask; doesn't mean you have to answer. (Laughter) As an attorney, you well know that, of course. On a personal level, how do you process - 'cause a lot of folk would not have had the courage, the conviction, or the commitment to stick to the truth and to do what you did when they, by definition, on demand, are going to put on Front Street the person who sponsored them to have that job in the first place. How did you decide inside of yourself that that was the answer you were going to give?

Iglesias: It was really hard. In fact, it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do because I knew there would be consequences. But as I talked to my wife about it, as I prayed about it, I just figured you know what? I can do the wrong thing, which is to stay silent and hope it never happens again, but I felt like if I didn't speak out, this would happen to future U.S. attorneys, and it's wrong.

Because our political system, our criminal justice system, is one that is apolitical in nature. It doesn't really matter if the president is Republican or Democrat. Historically, U.S. attorneys stay out of politics. I felt like this was a really bad new trend, and I wanted it not to be repeated.

Tavis: And yet there are a lot of folk who, David, don't think it's wrong to protect yourself and your own future, your own career, your own political ambitions.

Iglesias: Right, right. Well, I had to do a balancing test, and I felt like whatever future political career I had was less important than making sure that future U.S. attorneys should not be leaned on in this illicit kind of way.

Tavis: Let me ask you, to your point now, whether or not you think that, aside from doing what was right, aside from - if I can put it this way - standing in your own truth - aside from that, do you think you made the right decision? And I ask that against the backdrop of the fact that these investigations continue to go forth, the White House isn't cooperating, Mr. Rove invokes executive privilege - I can give you a bunch of examples.

Al Gonzalez is still attorney general; we'll come back to that in a second. But I could run you a litany of things that would suggest, if I were a cynic, that David Iglesias might have done the right thing, but so what? It don't matter; nothing's happened.

Iglesias: But the fat lady hasn't sung yet. It's too early. We won't know until the end of this administration, and I knew they would claim executive privilege. They would circle the wagons; they would try to give some information but not all the information. No, there is no doubt in my mind that I did the right thing. I know I did the right thing, and I've got no regrets for that.

It's the first time - I just heard for the first time a year or so ago the phrase "speaking truth to power." Never heard that expression. Now I know what that means.

Tavis: And for you, it means what?

Iglesias: Well, it means speaking truth knowing it's going to have negative consequences for your future.

Tavis: How does that empower you or make you rethink your choice?

Iglesias: It empowers me. It does not - I've never lost a night's sleep saying I should have been quiet. That's never entered my mind. And a lot of it's due to people - complete strangers in L.A., in New Mexico, in New York, in Washington - coming up to me and saying, “You did the right thing. We support you. Thank you.”

I had somebody say, “Sock it to Heather Wilson” yesterday in a restaurant. Complete stranger hugged me yesterday. That's very empowering, because the American people get it.

Tavis: That's the love. But there might also - with the flip side of being loved is being loathed, and I'm sure there are a lot of conservatives who are loathing David Iglesias for what he has done. So what are the consequences of what you've done?

Iglesias: Well, the consequences are employment, obviously; I've been out of work five months now, and I'll be out of work probably for another couple months. But ultimately, I know it's going to work out. But another consequence is I wanted to run for higher office. That's not going to happen. So I'm shutting a door to one of my future dreams, but still I know I did the right thing. And that gives me tremendous comfort.

Tavis: Let me explore that. I'm not so certain - and there's nothing to say that you have to or that you may even want to - but I'm not so certain - I want to get your take on this. My sense is, David, that we live in a world where people are really craving authenticity. I believe that people are craving authenticity even in their politics.

One of the reasons why Barack Obama is getting the love that he's getting - the guy hadn't been in the Senate but for a few years - people see something fresh, something different, something they think is authentically different than what's been out there - now, that's not an endorsement of Obama, but the point here is I think people are craving authenticity, and I'm not so certain that as some time passes, particularly if you've proven to be right about this, which we suspect that you will be, that people might not be looking for a David Iglesias to run for office somewhere down the road.

Iglesias: Well, we'll just have to see what happens. It would take a miracle for me to step back into the political ring.

Tavis: Are you gun-shy about running for office now, given (unintelligible)?

Iglesias: Well, sure, because you've got to keep in mind, Tavis, that the people that took me out were my friends. It wasn't the Democrats; it wasn't the liberals that took me out. It was the conservatives. It was the conservative wing of the New Mexican Republicans who cried to Pete Domenici, who complained to Karl Rove, President Bush, and Attorney General Gonzalez. They're the people who took me out. It wasn't the opposition.

Tavis: And yet, unless my hearing is bad, Mr. Iglesias, I thought I heard you say earlier in this conversation that you're still not prepared, after all this, to change your political affiliation. What's the problem?

Iglesias: (Laughs) Because I believe in the core ideas of the platform. I like the ideas of the Republican Party, which are smaller government, less taxes, personal responsibility, government restraint. Only problem is, our leaders haven't been practicing that. We've outspent the Democrats for the past eight years. So there's a difference between the ideals, which I love, and the actual application, which I don't love.

Tavis: I'm about to moderate a presidential forum; we've already done the Democrats in June. I moderated a forum of all the Democrats running for the White House; I get a chance to do the same thing for all the Republicans on September 27th here in prime time on PBS. I wonder, that said, whether or not you think that the Republican Party has sort of lost its moral compass?

Iglesias: They have lost their moral compass. I've described it as they've fallen off the cliff. They're in freefall right now. Look at most of the members of Congress that are being investigated or have actually pled guilty to federal felony counts. Almost all of them are Republican. So come on, we talk big, we talk about family values and smaller government and being on the up-and-up, but the practice, as I'm seeing it, is just the opposite, and it's really disillusioning.

Tavis: The Democrats are clearly no paragon of virtue. That said, though, what's happening on the Republican side that's causing that kind of falling off the cliff, as you put it?

Iglesias: Well, I think in large part it's being in control. I think the Democrats had problems in the eighties and nineties. They've been in power in Congress - at least for the House - for 50 years. Took the Republicans about 10 years to start acting out that way. I think what happens is when you have one party in control of the House, Senate, and White House, there are no checks and balances. It's one big happy kumbayah.

And our government is not set up to have that. It's set up to have factions that are pushing and shoving. It's like that rugby scrum? Those big guys, they put their heads down, they push each other around? That's what the founders intended, because there's compromise there. There's no radical left or radical right. They're right in the middle, trying to hammer something out.

Tavis: So if Iglesias is right, that means in just about two years the Democrats will start being indicted for all kind of stuff they have no business doing once they're in power for a little longer. That said, tell me what you make of the White House and the way they have handled - I mentioned earlier, Mr. Cheney calling this whole thing a witch hunt where you're concerned. But what do you make of the White House and how they've handled this matter, or not handled it, as it were?

Iglesias: It's completely predictable. I knew they would trot out executive privilege. George Washington trotted it out back in the 1700s. The problem is, no one has really applied executive privilege to this type of situation. It's true, U.S. attorneys are political appointees, we come and go; we typically serve at the pleasure of the president.

But here's the asterisk. The asterisk is, what happens if you force out a U.S. attorney to interfere with an ongoing corruption investigation, or you force out a U.S. attorney because he or she didn't file voter fraud prosecutions because the evidence wasn't there. Does executive privilege apply then? I don't think so. But I suspect it's going to be up to the courts to decide, ultimately, whether executive privilege covers this specific issue.

Tavis: At the top of our conversation, in introducing you, David, I underscored what so many people in your community appreciate and applaud and laud, quite frankly, which is your making some history in New Mexico as an Hispanic, being attorney general - being U.S. attorney, rather, in New Mexico, which is where I want to go - Freudian slip.

The attorney general, of course, the first Hispanic, Mr. Gonzalez, to have that high and esteemed position. A lot of folk in your community happy about the fact that he made history in that regard. What do you make now of one, Mr. Gonzalez, just in terms of his job duty - his job performance, I might put it another way. And then secondly, what do you make of him as one of your Hispanic brethren?

Iglesias: Let me tell you something: I'm heartbroken about it. When he was announced as our next attorney general, I was happy 'cause I knew about his history. He came from a dirt poor background in south Texas; his grandparents were immigrants from Mexico. He had to fight and scratch for everything he got. Nothing was handed to him on a golden platter.

But here's where I draw the line. His job as attorney general is to represent the people of the United States, not to be the White House counsel anymore. I don't think he ever made that connection. White House counsel, he's the president's lawyer. As attorney general, he's the people's lawyer. He's still being the president's lawyer. That's not what attorney generals do. In fact, just look at recent history. Janet Reno and Bill Clinton didn't get along. Reno was a good AG, because she knew her job was to represent the people and enforce federal law.

Tavis: I wonder whether or not - and this is my own conjecture, but again, I'm curious to get your take on it since you are, or certainly have been, a U.S. attorney and could one day end up being White House counsel. I wonder whether or not it was ever possible, with all due respect to Mr. Gonzalez, to do that.

To your point, it's not the history that he comes out of personally, but he and George Bush have been boys, they've been friends for years back in Texas. I often wonder - and the Senate, of course, let him through; of course, it was a Republican-controlled Senate at the time.

But I wondered then, when he got the nomination, when he got the appointment, whether or not a guy who was the president's boy, who was that close to the president, who was his counsel - particularly given all the stuff we know he did in the White House - could make the switch to being not the president's lawyer but the people's lawyer? Is it possible to make that switch when you're that close to the president?

Iglesias: I think it's really hard, but see, that's where the oversight comes in. That's where the Senate should have come in and asked them those hard questions. You're no longer going to be President Bush's lawyer; you're going to be the people's lawyer. Can you do that? And then ask those follow-up questions.

No, this has been personally very - because early on, I really admired Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. I thought he was a trailblazer; I could look upon him with a lot of pride. Now, I'm just really embarrassed for him.

Tavis: I'm not sure what kind of answer I'm going to get, but I'm going to ask anyway. Should he step down?

Iglesias: You know what? I've been asked that multiple times. Let me just say this: he knows what the right thing to do is. He needs to do it. He needs to do what's in the best interest of the career people that serve for 20 and 30 years at the Justice Department. He needs to cowboy up and do the right thing.

Tavis: What's the moral like inside the department right about now?

Iglesias: It's terrible. And I get this from career people in Washington, D.C. and in my old office that I talk to on occasion. It's not good. In fact, it's very bad right now.

Tavis: I've got three minutes here to go in our conversation - I wish I had more time. But I want to get to just a little bit of your personal story. I mentioned earlier that for those of us who've seen "A Few Good Men" a few good times - a bunch of times, I just saw it the other day, as a matter of fact - we know that the Tom Cruise character is, in part, built around what you have done in your career. Tell me about your back story.

Iglesias: Well, I was one of three Navy JAGs that tried that case. We had three separate courts martial, all down in Gitmo. Mine was the last to go - it was tried in December. Yeah, there was a code red. The Marines hurt - they didn't kill the fellow Marine, but they hurt him - and we asserted that offensive (unintelligible). So a lot of that's based on truth.

And I knew even then, as a junior officer - I think that was my second or third court martial - that this was going to be a real different kind of case, and it really transformed my career early on.

Tavis: So what do you (unintelligible) when you see a movie like that with Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson, no less?

Iglesias: Well, it's hard to put into words, watching the movie for the first time like I did in the early nineties and knowing what was going to happen, because I'd lived it. In fact, one of the other attorneys lives here in L.A. One of the three of us.

Tavis: Tell me about your family background - where you grew up. I'm curious about your background, where you grew up and about your family.

Iglesias: Sure, born in Panama. My parents were missionaries there, my dad's Panamanian, my mom's American. Lived there for six years and then the rest of the time my growing up was in New Mexico. I grew up trilingual, tricultural.

Tavis: How did you decide that this law thing, this legal thing, was something you wanted to do?

My sister was dating a law student. (Laughter) So I figured, I want to be like him. And I'm just glad she wasn't dating an astronaut or I would have probably said, “I want to be an astronaut.”

Tavis: That's funny - my sisters have never wanted to be anything like any of the girls I've dated, but that's a whole 'nother question. You got back from Africa, I'm told, not long ago?

Iglesias: Yes, just two weeks ago. I'm still in the Navy Reserve, and they send me to do training of foreign military, foreign law enforcement, on things like border security and the legal response to terrorism. So I was in Rwanda for a week, yes. That was - well, how does a country bounce back from losing 800,000 people when the total population has nine million people?

That's almost 10 percent of the population. It makes you love America, but it makes you want to reach out and make sure that something like that never happens again.

Tavis: so what happens to David Iglesias now? What do you do for the -

Iglesias: Well, I'm working on lots of projects. I'm probably going to be writing a book, hopefully come out some time next year. And I hope to land a job in the private sector in a couple months; I'm very close to closing a deal. And I've got lots of projects going on.

Tavis: Well, I'm honored to have you come on the program, and I appreciate you taking the time to do this. I know that there are a lot of folk looking for the opportunity to talk to you, and I know these issues cannot be easy to address. I thank you for taking the time to come on and talk to us about it.

Iglesias: My pleasure, thank you very much.

Tavis: And when the book comes out (laughter), you gotta come back and see me.

Iglesias: I'll do it.

Tavis: You promise?

Iglesias: I promise.

Tavis: All right, nice to meet you.

Iglesias: Thank you.

Tavis: Glad to have you on the program. David Iglesias, you've been seeing this case, of course, talked about all over the news, as you will for, I'm sure, a few more weeks, if not months. And glad to have him on the program.